As is common with sequels, whether of books or movies, they are not as good as the original. In this case, they were good enough for the plane and train ride reading and I did enjoy (and finish) them during our vacation.

The Ghost Brigades does not feature the protagonists from Old Man’s War, though it is set in the same universe. It was a fun read and a decent book.

The Last Colony ties up parts of the story in The Ghost Brigades and the protagonists in Old Man’s War in a new space adventure. It is better story than The Ghost Brigades and a lot of fun to read.

I read Old Man’s War on my phone at the time, Treo 650 and The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony were the first books I read on my new Kindle. I enjoyed reading on the Kindle, with the only issue being the flight crew’s insistence that I had to turn it off during takeoff and landing.

Thus it was that I finished The Last Colony on the flight back from Rome to New York and realized that there was a further sequel, Zoe’s Tale. Waiting for my connection to Atlanta, I made my first impulse Kindle purchase and bought Zoe’s Tale.

Zoe’s Tale is a retelling of the story of The Last Colony from the point of view of Zoe, the teenage daughter of the main characters of the previous novel. Making the same story interesting in a new book without introducing inconsistencies is hard and John Scalzi succeeds somewhat. However, Zoe’s Tale is definitely the weakest book of the series.

we’ve got a little “holding page” currently at the tor.com URL, where we’re urging people to sign up as preregistered users. In exchange for their advance support (and their permission to email them our newsletters) we are, For A Limited Time, sending them links through which they can download free, un-DRMed digital editions of various recent Tor books in a variety of formats. For instance, if you sign up now, you can download The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory; in a few days, that will go away but you’ll be given the opportunity to download Farthing by Jo Walton. Since we’re rotating books in and out of the program at a fair clip, the earlier you sign up, the more free books you’ll score.

And this is how I got the Old Man’s War ebook, along with a dozen others and continuing.

This was also my first experience of reading a book on my Treo. While I won’t read long works on my PDA/phone, I found reading short novels pleasant.

Old Man’s War is the story of 75 year old John Perry who joins the Colonial Defense Force and battles aliens around the universe in his new, young, green body. It is well written and interesting throughout and reminds me somewhat of Robert Heinlein.

John Scalzi’s first novel, Old Man’s War was nominated for a Hugo award in 2005.